Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy

by Terry G. Jordan

Overview

Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveler fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has traveled the back roads and hidden trails of rural Texas in search of such cemeteries. With camera in hand, he has visited more than one thousand cemeteries created and maintained by the Anglo-American, black, Indian, Mexican, and German settlers of Texas. His discoveries of sculptured stones and mounds, hex signs and epitaphs, intricate landscapes and unusual decorations represent a previously unstudied and unappreciated wealth of Texas folk art and tradition. Texas Graveyards not only marks the distinct ethnic and racial traditions in burial practices but also preserves a Texas legacy endangered by changing customs, rural depopulation, vandalism, and the erosion of time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292780705
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	06/01/1982
Series:	Elma Dill Russell Spencer Foundation Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	1,026,362
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

A sixth-generation Texan, the late Terry G. Jordan held the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas in the Department of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin. His many publications include Texas Log Buildings and German Seed in Texas Soil, both published by the University of Texas Press.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. The Truth about Cemeteries
• 2. The Southern Folk Cemetery in Texas
• 3. Traditional Southern Grave Markers
• 4. The Mexican Graveyard in Texas
• 5. The Texas German Graveyard
• 6. A Legacy Squandered?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Map of Texas Counties

Editorial Reviews

...throw away your inhibitions, forget the ghost stories, and travel with Terry Jordan through the fascinating world of tombstones and epitaphs, the departed, the remaining, and the odd, revealing ways in which we honor the dead.... Jordan treats his subject with respect in both words and pictures.

Southern Living

...Jordan's wonderful Texas Graveyards is a tour of Texas history in quite a unique way.... the book is a genuine masterpiece.

El Paso Times